Day: September 5, 2018

Looking out for cars and mortality trying to find some sort of geometry
Avoiding mistakes keep an eye on every step I take
Everything is building and it appears that you’re all architects and engineers
That’s how it looks that’s how it looks from here
I’m an ex-spectator can’t you see
I’m an ex-spectator never let me, never let my, never let my vision get in the way of
Here’s some questions that the writer sent
Can an observer be a participant?
Have I seen too much?
Does it count if it doesn’t touch?
If the view is all I can ascertain pure understanding is out of range
If I make that call why can’t I make that change?
I’m an ex-spectator can’t you see?
I’m an ex-spectator never let my never let my vision get in the way of me

The Director General of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, says the 2mm hole detected on the International Space Station (ISS) last week was caused deliberately by someone using a drill, and that an investigation is under way to find out who is responsible. (The Guardian)

A Microsoft Azure datacenter in Texas goes down due to a cooling system failure. Outages in cloud services were reported worldwide (Zdnet)

Wednesday, Sept 5, 2018

Britain charges 2 Russians in nerve gas attack on ex-spy, daughter On Wednesday, British prosecutors charged two Russian men in absentia for the March 4 nerve gas attack on former Russia spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Sue Hemming, director of legal services at the Crown Prosecution Service, said there was ample evidence “to provide a realistic prospect of conviction” of the two men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, and a European arrest warrant has been issued but Britain won’t “be applying to Russia for the extradition of these men” because Russia doesn’t extradite its citizens. Police said they believe Petrov and Boshirov smuggled the military-grade Novichok nerve agent into Britain in a counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle. They are not yet charging the men over the death of Dawn Sturgess and her boyfriend, who found the bottle June 27. Source: Reuters,The Associated Press

Ayanna Pressley pulls off latest Democratic primary upset In the latest sign of a shifting electoral atmosphere, progressive challenger Ayanna Pressley beat 10-term incumbent Rep. Mike Capuano in a Tuesday Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts. Pressley in 2009 became the first black woman elected to the Boston City Council, and she will be the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress — there is no Republican on the ballot. “Change is on the way,” Pressley said. Her victory came after a string of strong performances by black candidates in other states. Capuano’s defeat followed that of another House Democrat, longtime incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, who lost earlier in the summer to progressive newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York. Capuano conceded as early returns showed Pressley trouncing him. Pressley came out swinging at President Trump, calling him “a racist, misogynistic, truly empathy-bankrupt man.” Source: Slate,The New York Times

Facebook and Twitter leaders to testify on response to disinformation Facebook and Twitter executives head to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify about how their companies responded to foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections. According to written testimony, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey plan to take an apologetic approach but also talk about their companies’ mounting efforts to stem orchestrated outside attempts to spread disinformation and otherwise manipulate social media users. “The actions we’ve taken in response … show our determination to do everything we can to stop this kind of interference from happening,” Sandberg said in written testimony. Sandberg and Dorsey will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the morning. Google declined an invitation sent to Larry Page, CEO of Google parent Alphabet. Source: The New York Times

An Iranian man self-immolated in front of Mayor of Tehran Mohammad-Ali Afshani in a suspected protest against the deteriorating economic situation in the country. (Trend)

Tuesday, Sept 4, 2018

Seven people are killed and more than 30 are injured during a rally in Basra, Iraq after security forces opened fire. (Yeni Şafak English)

Graeber

Contemporary, bureaucratic corporate capitalism was a creation not of Britain, but of the United States and Germany, the two rival powers that spent the first half of the twentieth century fighting two bloody wars over who would replace Britain as a dominant world power—wars that culminated, appropriately enough, in government-sponsored scientific programs to see who would be the first to discover the atom bomb. It is significant, then, that our current technological stagnation seems to have begun after 1945, when the United States replaced Britain as organizer of the world economy.

Americans do not like to think of themselves as a nation of bureaucrats—quite the opposite—but the moment we stop imagining bureaucracy as a phenomenon limited to government offices, it becomes obvious that this is precisely what we have become. The final victory over the Soviet Union did not lead to the domination of the market, but, in fact, cemented the dominance of conservative managerial elites, corporate bureaucrats who use the pretext of short-term, competitive, bottom-line thinking to squelch anything likely to have revolutionary implications of any kind.

If we do not notice that we live in a bureaucratic society, that is because bureaucratic norms and practices have become so all-pervasive that we cannot see them, or, worse, cannot imagine doing things any other way.

Recent Posts

Cioran

“To send someone a book is to commit a burglary—a case of breaking and entering. It is to trample down his solitude, what he holds most sacred, for it is to oblige him to desist from himself in order to think about your thoughts.”
-Cioran

Thinking

Tools

Transportation

Wars

Writing

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Quote of the Day

“All the world’s longest zipline’s flights are cancelled until further notice and we will be in direct contact with all our customers by phone immediately.”
– Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi

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John Gray

‘Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.’ If humans disturb the balance of the Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside. Critics of Gaia theory say they reject it because it is unscientific. The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs.
-John Gray

There are, to be sure, a number of websites purporting to represent the Illuminati, but none is very professional-looking.
-Niall Ferguson

It was an idea. I don't know. Who knows where they fucking come from. Isaac Newton invented gravity cause some asshole hit him in the head with an apple.
-Christopher Moltisanti

James Howard Junstler

2017 was a spectacular year for intellectual collapse among the political Left, but especially for its subsidiaries on campus. The trauma of Donald Trump’s election victory put this faction into a fugue state in which no opportunity for coercion and persecution of imagined enemies could be missed. The victim-oppressor politics spawned by the critical-theory-for-lunch-bunch has produced an ideology in which “inclusion” means segregated dorms, racially separate graduation ceremonies, and (at Harvard) closing down age-old men’s and women’s voluntary social associations. And “diversity” means as long as you express the exact same ideas we do.

"The action was one that rewarded itself."
- Scipio Africanus, 218 B.C.

I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.
宁在宝马车里哭，也不在自行车上笑
-Ma Nuo

“I think that when the United States felt they were at the forefront of the so-called civilized world and when the Soviet Union collapsed, they were under the illusion that the United States was capable of everything and they could act with impunity. And that’s always a trap, because in this situation, a person and a country begins to commit mistakes. There is no need to analyze the situation. No need to think about the consequences. No need to economize. And the country becomes inefficient and one mistake follows another. And I think that’s the trap the United States has found itself in.”